BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Events/Presentation” Category
It’s summertime and that means many BatchBluers have been taking a little time off to spend with family, go camping, splash 
around in pools and relax just a bit before the mad crunch of our Super Secret Fall Launch. That doesn’t stop folks from writing about us (in fact, judging from all the press we received in recent weeks, I should go on vacation more often!)
Here are a few links to some recent articles in case you saw one of us at the beach and want to make sure that yes, there is still work getting done around BatchBlue headquarters…
Award winning software AND software builders!
We are delighted to have been selected as a Rising Star by CRM magazine as part of the 2010 CRM Market Awards. This prestigious event is attended by some of the biggest names in the CRM space: other winners included industry analyst and author Brian Solis, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and companies like FourSquare, Radian6, Salesforce and IBM. We’re proud to have been chosen as representing “SMB meets social—in a very good way” by this organization. See the complete list of award recipients.
Speaking of winners, our very own VP of Technology Sean Ransom received his 40 under Forty Award at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI. A good time was had by most all of the BatchBluers (a couple of our crew couldn’t make it) as we celebrated Sean’s specialness with delicious drinks and food. Congratulations again to Sean on his achievement!
Multi-media
One of our favorite people in the small business world is Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends. Pamela and I were honored to be interviewed by her recently on her radio show. We had a great time talking small business with one of the leaders in this space.
While in Chicago for Start-Up Weekend, I sat down with Tim Jahn from Beyond the Pedway to talk about a topic we’re quite passionate about: the Customer Experience! Tim asked some great questions and meeting him was definitely a highlight to an already really fun and interesting weekend with some rocking Chicago entrepreneurs.
Fresh ink
The past couple of weeks have also brought some nice product reviews that we wanted to share. CRM Buyer featured us in a recent product profile of BatchBook and we received a mention in a helpful article from PC Mag about how to choose a CRM.
Phew, that’s it I think. A special thanks to our PR folks at Matter Communications who help us wrangle all this media and to all our great customers and readers for being so interested in what we’re up to.
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Tags: Community, Customer Service, small business
Our panel “Friends with Business Benefits: How Integrations Sell Apps” made it through the first round for SXSW11! We’ll be speaking with some of our favorite Small Business Web folks and other integration fans about why integrated apps are the way to go for companies and for customers.
Here’s a description of the panel, should be a fun one!
“The Small Business Web now has over 100 web app companies all serving the small business market. Together, we’re re-writing the rules for traditional business development and building the market for small business software through integrations.
So how has it not devolved into fisticuffs and mayhem? And why does integration help both the consumers and the vendors who are building the applications?
Members of the Small Business Web will discuss the power of the open API, why customers buy apps that integrate, how they are embracing their competition and why sometimes even they have to remember to “Hug It Out” as they work together to define the future of the Small Business Web.”
We need your help in making our dream of a Small Business Web panel a reality by giving us your vote*, your Tweets, your love etc. Vote for our panel and hopefully we’ll see you in Austin in March.
*You’ll need to sign in or create an account at the SXSW site to vote.
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Tags: Community, events, small business web, SXSW
We’re excitedly preparing to attend to Chicago-based events later this month. The first, Start-up Weekend, takes place June 
25-27 at the Illinois Technology Association. Here, aspiring entrepreneurs get together on Friday to come up with an idea, form teams to build it, and present at the end of the weekend. We love being around folks who are filled with ideas and just starting out (both Pamela and I are on the advisory board for Providence’s own Betaspring accelerator project) so I’m really looking forward to what the teams come up with.
We’re also hoping to sponsoring one attendee, so if you know some one in Chicago who wants to attend, let us know! Be warned, this person will receive our unconditional public support!
On June 26th, we’re also sponsoring Chicago’s first Freelance Camp. Freelance camp is an unconference environment where a bunch of people get together to learn from one another: in this case, people either working as freelancers or building products/services that support the freelance market.
From their website:
Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, ‘out of the box’ thinking (oh no, the buzzwords are attacking!), unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston, DC and more.
At Freelance Camp, we’ll be hanging out and doing cool stuff with some of our favorite Small Business Web partners: MOO cards, FreshBooks Formstack and MailChimp will all be there as well. We always have fun when we get together and hope you’ll be there to join us! See you in Chicago…
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Tags: batchblue, chicago, Community, freelance camp, freshbooks, mailchimp, moo, small business web
Recognizing our "Most Connected Customer" Brandon Dunlap at the SXSBW Happy Hour
In preparing for the launch of the new Small Business Web Directory and for the SXSBW (South by Small Business Web!) party that we co-sponsored at SXSW last week, we came across someone who we think just might be our “most connected” customer, Brandon Dunlap from Brightfly, Inc. Brandon uses several of the Small Business Web members applications to run his business.
We were delighted to bring Brandon to the party as our Special Guest of Honor and showered him with all sorts of hip and useful schwag from the thirteen sponsoring companies of the party.
Here’s Brandon’s story:
Very well-connected
Brandon Dunlap, managing director of research at Brightfly, Inc., logged nearly 100,000 air miles last year crisscrossing the country for business meetings, conferences and other professional events. He is constantly networking, which in turn helps the research and consultancy firm grow its contact base by thousands each year.
To foster and grow all of these relationships, Brightfly relies on a number of solutions offered by The Small Business Web, an open collective of businesses aimed at connecting Web applications to help small businesses bloom and grow. The integrated solutions, which work together through their open APIs, help Brightfly maintain mountains of contact data and more efficiently and personally stay engaged with each person.
“Being a relationship-driven company, we don’t have a sales team managing all of our data. without the help of BatchBlue, this would be an arduous task. The companies of The Small Business Web give us a single point to manage all the ways we get in touch with our friends and colleagues in the field,” said Dunlap. “Since The Small Business Web solutions can ‘talk’ with each other, I can get back to people faster, even while I am on the road. The time savings are phenomenal.”
For example, Dunlap might collect a batch of business cards while at a information security conference in San Francisco and send them off to Shoeboxed before he gets on a plane to return home to Texas. Once back in the office, he can take all of the contact data that can be scanned and digitized by Shoeboxed and seamlessly enter it into his BatchBook social CRM account by BatchBlue. BatchBook enables him to tag each person by what event he met them at, what types of materials they requested or any other follow-up or other identifiers. He can then build and manage e-mail lists using MailChimp, another Small Business Web partner, to stay in touch with contacts with key research developments as they occur. Recently, Brightfly has kicked off a Competitive Compliance survey project leveraging the relationship between MailChimp and Small Business Web member SurveyGizmo to glean research insights from leaders in the information security and audit field.
Data in Brightfly’s is also imported into a Freshbooks account for recurring invoices, while Small Business Web partner Clarity helps Dunlap and others try to forecast and look for trends in their revenue streams.
“Everything in our business is done on personal connections. For everyone on my team to share all that information in one location and to be able to pivot across that data is huge,” said Dunlap. “The Small Business Web network of solutions helps us maintain currency and relevancy with all the individuals we need to contact at a price and service level better than a single-source solution.”
It was great to meet Brandon in person and be able to learn first-hand how the Small Business Web is helping small businesses like his succeed.
What about you? Are you using multiple web apps to help your small business bloom and grow? Let us know, we want to hear from you!
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Tags: batchbook, freshbooks, mailchimp, small business, small business web, SXSWi
We’ve been working with many of our Small Business Web friends in planning a Big Party for Small Business. If you’re going to be in Texas next week, we hope you’ll stop by from some food, drinks and conversation with the smashing hosts of the party (and the people who love them!)
Here are some of the small business SaaS companies who will be in attendance and eager to meet up:
FreshBooks
Formspring
Handset Detection
MailChimp
oDesk
Outright
Rackspace
Shipwire
shoeboxed
surveygizmo
TeamSupport.com
Wufoo
…and of course, good old BatchBlue (hint: look for the blue cupcakes!)
You can RSVP (required by Austin law) and find out more about the party on the official party page. You can also follow the party-specific Twitter account, where we’ll be posting updates, plans, pictures and more.
See you in Texas!
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Tags: batchblue, small business, small business web, SXSW, SXSW10
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